Paris. The hour has arrived; the Prussians brought
to bay, hope to find refuge in Paris. This is their last hope; their
last resource."

In order to encourage us to put up with our short commons, we are now
perpetually being told that the Government has in reserve vast stores of
potted meats, cheese, butter, and other luxuries, of which we have
almost forgotten the very taste; and that when things come to the worst
we shall turn the corner, and enter into a period of universal
abundance. These stores seem to me much like the mirage which lures on
the traveller of the desert, and which perpetually recedes as he
advances. But the great difficulty of the moment is to procure fuel. I
am ready, as some one said, to eat the soles of my boots for the sake of
my country; but then they must be cooked. All the mills are on the
Marne, and cannot be approached. Steam mills have been put up, but they
work slowly; and whatever may be the amount of corn yet in store, it is
almost impossible to grind enough of it to meet the daily requirements.

A good deal of discussion is going on as to the time which it will take
to revictual Paris; it is thought that it can be done in seven days, but
I do not myself see how it is to be done in anything like this time. One
of the principal English bankers here has, I understand, sent an agent
by balloon to buy boats of small draught in England, in order to bring
provisions up the Seine. As a speculation, I should imagine that the
best plan would be to amass them on the Belgian or Luxemburg frontier.
About two-thirds of the population will be without means to buy food,
even if the food were at their doors. Trade and industry will not revive
for some time; they will consequently be entirely dependent upon the
State for their means of subsistence. Even if work is offered to them,
many of them not be able at once to reassume their habits of daily
industry; the Bohemian life which they have led for the last four
months, and which they are still leading, is against it. A siege is so
abnormal a condition of things, that the State has been obliged to pay
them for doing practically nothing, as otherwise they would have fallen
into the hands of the anarchists; but this pottering about from day to
day with a gun, doing nothing except play at billiards and drink, has
been very demoralising, and it will be long before its effect ceases to
be felt.

The newspapers are somewhat irreverent over the diplomatic pr